


Penning the Pentiad

by zoicite



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Bad Jokes, F/M, Harrow the Ninth Spoilers, M/M, Post-Canon, Threesomes, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:07:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28293564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoicite/pseuds/zoicite
Summary: Ortus was dead, but the dead could still die.
Relationships: Ortus Nigenad/Abigail Pent/Magnus Quinn
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Penning the Pentiad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [corvidlesbian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvidlesbian/gifts).



Ortus lost himself in the triumph of the fight, in the swing and the thrust of a rapier that he never once felt a single moment of kinship with in his pre-River life. He was fighting alongside Protesilaus the Seventh, a lover of the written word. More than that, he was fighting alongside Matthias Nonius. If he were to die again that very instant, he would die content and fulfilled.

There was a moment, when the beast sucked him in, that he thought surely that was the end. Not even a revenant in the River could survive such a monstrous tumor of hair and teeth and feet and claws. Not even Nonius could make it out of this in living death.

Ortus did what he could. He thrust with the rapier, attacked every inch of globular flesh he could reach. He imagined himself as Matthias Nonius, as the late great Gideon Nav, and he fought harder than he ever had in his entire life, and he hoped, for the very first time, that if Captain Aiglamene could see him, she would feel proud. He shouted out for his father and the Reverend Daughter and the Tomb. He clawed and he punched and he charged and thrashed, and none of it was enough.

He tried to imagine it as he would write it once he made it out of this and away, but he would never write it, and knew that the words would not come. He was not poetry in motion, he was a desperate sweating shouting beast of a man, without care or grace, without language or voice. He was dead, but the dead could still die.

The pink tumorous flesh crowded in from every direction, closing around him until he could no longer swing his sword or kick his legs. The beast was up against his back and his sides and his stomach. The beast was pressing down on the top of his head and Ortus shouted for Protesilaus and he screamed for Nonius and he cried out for Harrow.

He was dead, but the dead could still die, and Ortus was running out of options.

He did the only thing he could think to do. He could not point his sword anywhere but down, so down it went, into the base of the thing, the blade slipping in like a dull knife through his mother’s jellied leeks. He dragged it with both hands, tearing a line through the beast’s floor, and then he slipped through, the beast tight all around him, but he was moving, falling, sliding down through flesh and fingers that tried to grab, that scratched at his arms and his face but couldn’t seem to take hold.

Ortus hit the bottom of the beast with a heavy thud, with more screaming pain than he’d ever felt in life, not even when he stood before a bomb as it exploded and tore him apart.

Ortus was dead, but the dead could still die, and Ortus was ready. He closed his eyes and prepared himself for whatever came next.

* * *

Ortus opened his eyes.

There was a blurred figure standing over him, a woman dressed all in black. Every inch of Ortus ached and he groaned as his fingers curled into the coarse fabric of familiar bedsheets. The room was cold and damp; it smelled of mold and of home. The Ninth.

“Ortus?”

Ortus recognized the voice, but had a hard time placing it. He guessed: “Mother?”

There was a laugh, in a different voice this time, one that was also familiar and probably belonged to a man.

“I should bloody well hope not!” came the jovial response.

Ortus blinked and lifted a heavy hand to wipe it over his eyes. He blinked again and the room started to come into focus. It was his old cell on the Ninth, there was no mistaking that, but the bed was bigger and the people in the room had never been to the Ninth and would never go now.

The woman wasn’t wearing black after all. She was wearing brown and navy blue and her long hair was tied back at the neck. A thick pair of glasses perched heavily on her nose and they threatened to slide off when she leaned over to get a better look at him. Behind her stood the man with rich brown skin and dark hair curling around his ears, a short beard framing his bright smile.

“Lady Pent,” Ortus said, unable to keep the surprise from his voice. “Magnus the Fifth. How--are we home on the Ninth?”

Abigail looked up at the dark ceiling, over at the walls. “It’s a cheery place, isn’t it? But no, dear, another bubble, it seems. It shouldn’t be possible--there’s no one in here that might have pulled us in--but as I’ve said, there’s something very wrong with the River. I suppose, given that nothing is abiding by the usual rules, we might have somehow created it ourselves, or you did. Magnus and I couldn’t have come up with this. Either way, we shouldn’t stay long. Who knows where we might end up.”

Ortus pushed himself up on the bed. Abigail Pent reached for him, but he waved her hands away, stood unsteadily on his feet and picked up his rapier.

It all came rushing back. The beast and the skin and the teeth, the _feet_ , and Ortus didn’t realize he’d started to sway until Magnus and Abigail each appeared at his side to help him back onto the bed.

“Perhaps not yet,” Abigail suggested. When he sat heavily on the edge of the bed, she sat down beside him. She pressed a hand to his chest and tried to push him back against the mattress, but he shook his head and covered her smaller hand with his.

Magnus carefully pried the rapier from Ortus’s hand. He stepped back and examined the thing with a grunt. He felt the weight of it in his sword arm, swung it a few times and listened to the whistle of the blade slicing through the air, and then he set it carefully against the wall.

“Relax, dear,” Abigail said. She rubbed the palm of her hand against his chest as she said it, but it wasn’t clear if she was speaking to him or her husband. “There’s time enough to figure out how we ended up here and how we’ll manage to get out, but for now, it’s been a rough journey for the lot of us, and with the Reverend Daughter returned to her body, the Sleeper defeated, and this Resurrection Beast chased off, a bit of rest is a welcome thing. We’ll let you take the bed first.”

Ortus stilled, looked from Magnus to Abigail and then back to Magnus. “The Resurrection Beast ran?”

“You did it,” Magnus said. “The lot of you.”

“Is everyone okay?” Ortus asked. “The Second and Seventh? Nonius?”

“I don’t know,” Abigail admitted. “I wish I did. We were pulled upstream by the thing, but we only saw glimpses of the fight.”

“Saw enough to see you get pulled inside,” Magnus said, “just before Abs and I were sucked beneath it. It was a mess of a thing, those _spines_. Ghastly.”

Ortus hadn’t seen any spines whatsoever and wasn’t sure if Magnus’s version sounded better or worse. He felt tired and so awake that his entire body was buzzing, nerves firing, muscles twitching with the need to _do_ something. He felt like he could take up the sword, could engage Magnus the Fifth in a good natured duel. To the touch. That was how they said it was done. It was far better than the Ninth’s _to the floor_ , far preferable to a young Gideon Nav falling on him in triumph, her body made up entirely of pointed elbows. Ortus had seen Magnus duel in the training room in that strange facsimile of Canaan House. Magnus the Fifth knew how to win gently.

Ortus realized, suddenly, that he was staring and what was more, Magnus was staring back. He dropped his eyes.

“Are you all right, Ninth?” Magnus asked.

Abigail’s hand was hot on his chest and his heart felt too fast, thumping in a rhythm that would have had his mother in a panic, would have relegated him to bed for weeks.

Magnus’s eyes caught on Ortus’s chest and Ortus looked down. He was horrified to discover that his hand was still pressed over Abigail’s, his thumb swiping slowly, up and down over her fingers. He dropped the hand down to his side and shook his head with apology.

“I’m not flirting,” Ortus clarified, which was obvious, a stupid thing to say. “I swear, I never meant--I didn’t mean--” Ortus could barely stand, was so twisted up he’d sucked them into a bubble of the Ninth. Ortus was in no condition for flirting, even if he knew how. Which he, of course, did not.

“My husband’s jokes aside, I wouldn’t mind if you were,” Abigail said. Her eyes were on Magnus as she said this. “And if we’re honest, I don’t think he would mind either.”

Magnus laughed again. He laughed more than anyone Ortus had ever met. “That depends.”

“On what, dear?”

“On whether our good man plans to point any of that flirting my way.”

Ortus must have looked shocked by that admission because Magus let out a loud guffaw and slapped him jovially on the back. “Just kidding with you, friend. Unless--”

“Unless,” Abigail echoed. Her bespeckled eyes fell to Ortus’s mouth and lingered there.

Ortus, who lived on the Ninth his entire life and had never had many (any) options for kissing, much less anything beyond that, wasn’t sure how to answer. It was strange, spending time with the Fifth. Physically, they appeared to be Ortus’s peers. Mid-thirties, surely, perhaps even the same age, but beyond that Ortus felt--

When Ortus was very young, he had affectionate feelings for his mother’s closest friend, another nun named Sister Moxauna. Sister Moxie once had three children, two of them near Ortus’s age, one of them--Nornan--a close friend; but of course, none of them survived the creche flu. It killed everyone, all of the children except Ortus and Gideon Nav. Perhaps that was why Moxie was always so kind to Ortus. Perhaps he reminded her of Norn. She was a soft woman with a heavy bosom and when she hugged him, she pressed his cheek against it. Ortus thought of it often, of his cheek pressed to comforting breasts, even after she passed, unexpected and sudden in her sleep.

Abigail Pent was nothing like Sister Moxie. Abigail Pent was young, for one thing. She was solid, soft and hard at the same time, but her breasts--

“It’s all right,” Abigail said. She removed her hand from his chest and patted Ortus’s knee. “It was an invitation, not a demand.”

“No!” Ortus burst forth, tone abrupt and lacking all poetry. “No, I--” One hand found Abigail’s and held her palm tight against his knee. Ortus’s other hand reached for Magnus and when Magnus came to sit down at his other side, Ortus curled the hand around the back of Magnus’s neck and pulled him in until their mouths met in a kiss, surprising no one more than himself.

It was Ortus’s first kiss.

His mouth was slack and he was scared, but Magnus smiled against his lips, his beard rough where it brushed up against Ortus’s chin and Ortus remembered that he was a man that lived beyond death, a man that fought a foe greater than a dragon and won. Ortus would never be the likes of the great Matthias Nonius, who slew the fearsome Sleeper dead at their feet, but Ortus was a hero of a different kind. A hero among revenants, a comrade of the great Nonius. Ortus had rushed into battle at the side of a Lyctor. Ortus could kiss this man, and then this woman, and then probably (if they let him), the man again.

Ortus kissed Magnus again. Magnus let him, seemed eager for it, in fact. Ortus had always known that there were worlds beyond the Ninth and it flummoxed him suddenly that he’d never desired to see them. He had not known that there were Abigails and Magnuses waiting. He’d never stopped writing long enough to consider that he might be an active participant in stories he’d only ever imagined for someone else.

When Magnus pulled away, Ortus attempted to follow, but Magnus shook his head, eyes shining with delight, and with both hands on Ortus’s shoulders, he turned Ortus toward his wife.

Abigail said, “Your indefatigability in the face of ancient death becomes you.”

Ortus recognized his own words, quoted back at him with reverence, and he rushed toward her mouth. She caught his face with her hands and laughed as she led him more gently into the kiss.

It was softer than the kiss he’d shared with Magnus. It lulled him and when Abigail kissed his mouth open, when he felt the first tentative touch of her tongue, he shook beneath her hands, shuddered out a moan.

“Oh,” Magnus said. He sounded surprised. “Yes, very nice.”

Abigail took one hand from Ortus’s face and reached for her husband, pulling him closer until Ortus felt the man’s body pressed to his side, and as Abigail kissed his mouth back open, Magnus leaned in until Ortus felt hot breath against his neck and a larger hand on his knee. Ortus shivered under Magnus’s touch and Magnus began to pull away, unsure perhaps, or just shifting, Ortus panicked either way, shook his head, and turned to say, “Don’t go. Please.”

“Not going anywhere,” Magnus assured him. “Pretty sure you’ve trapped us in here, actually.”

Ortus froze. “I--what?”

Abigail shook her head. “Not _trapped_ ; not really. At least not unwillingly. I’m sure the means to leave will make itself clear with time. And until then--”

“Until then,” Magnus echoed in agreement.

Abigail had hands on Ortus again, hands that opened his robe, that pressed low on his belly and then fumbled over his belt. Once she had it unbuckled, she reached across him to do the same for Magnus. Ortus, unable to just sit there and watch, turned to Magnus and found himself in another kiss. This time when Abigail tried to push him back onto the bed, he went and Magnus went with him, mouth insistent against Ortus’s mouth, tongue pressing, and Ortus moaned and pushed at Magnus’s shirt until he found what he wanted, until his hands found smooth skin and Magnus’s muscles clenched beneath his fingers.

Magnus laughed against his lips. “Fuck, man. Your fingers are freezing.” He pressed Ortus’s hand to his skin, rubbed against his fingers to warm them.

Ortus didn’t want to talk about cold hands. He didn’t want to think about how he’d trapped them all in one of Harrow’s strange bubbles. He just wanted to kiss this mouth and that one, to press his nose to Abigail’s neck and breathe her in. She was on the bed with them now, and she leaned over Ortus to drop kisses onto his face, his lips, and he would give anything to kiss them both at once, to feel the press of those mouths to his and know that for a moment, they were both his. Ortus Nigenad, warrior. Ortus Nigenad, poet. Ortus Nigenad, _cavalier extraordinaire_.

When their hands began to push down his trousers, he helped them, lifted his hips and pushed at the fabric. Magnus’s mouth was hot at his waist and when his hand wrapped around Ortus, it was with a surety, a confidence that Ortus envied, could never imagine for himself. They were comrades, brothers in arms, peers, and still Ortus felt so young, so new beside Magnus Quinn..

Oh Lord of the Resurrection. Oh King of the Nine.

Ortus was dead, but the dead could still die. Ortus was dead, but the dead could be resurrected. Ortus would die at Magnus’s hand, or he would be reborn. Either way, he’d be irreversibly changed. He could never look back.

“You know, they say the pen is mightier than the sword?” Magnus murmured. He pressed a kiss to Ortus’s shoulder, another at the center of Ortus’s chest. When he looked up at Ortus, it was with a sharp gleam in his eye. “Well, I’ve found there’s one thing even mightier than that.”

Abigail rolled her eyes at Ortus, but Ortus could barely focus on that with Magnus’s hand on him. On him.

“Oh,” Ortus said, finally getting it. _“Oh!”_ he said, when Magnus moved his hand.

It was the sort of joke Gideon Nav would have loved if Gideon Nav was with them. Thank the Lord Undying that she was not. She never would have let him live this down.

Ortus pushed all thoughts of Gideon from his mind, focused on the sweet slide of Magnus’s hand instead. Above him Abigail removed her shirt and Ortus moaned at the sight. She was beautiful, and Ortus was right: breasts to rival Sister Moxie. His hand lifted toward them and when she saw him hesitate, she took his hand in hers, pressed it to the soft swell of her left breast, fingers right up against the hardened point of nipple.

“She’s magnificent, isn’t she?” Magnus asked. “I die every time.”

It was beyond anything he’d ever imagined. Eighteen volumes of the Noniad and he’d never conceived of a moment like this for Nonius. Nothing as exquisite as this, as the feel of Magnus Quinn’s sex against fingertips, the heat of Magnus’s mouth on his length, or the slick slide of his fingers into Abigail Pent. When Magnus guided Ortus over Abigail, when Abigail took him into the heart of her, Ortus died and he died and he died once again.

It was over too fast. He was graceless and fumbling and he shook in surprise when the climax hit him too soon, too soon, oh God, way too soon. He choked out a guttural cry and pressed his forehead to Abigail’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve never--”

“You’re so good,” she promised, and he believed everything she said, always had and always would. Abigail Pent was a true heroine, a hero worthy of eighteen volumes, twenty, maybe more. “You’re absolutely perfect.”

Magnus guided him off of her, helped him settle at her side, and then he took Ortus’s place and Ortus leaned back and watched how they moved together, an intricately choreographed dance that they’d perfected over so many years. All those years on the Ninth alone, and the Fifth had this. All those years with pen and flimsy, with no one who understood him, no one who tried. Harrowhark read his poetry, but then, he was her cavalier. She was stuck with him. What else could she do? Here in the present, Abigail Pent wrapped her legs around her husband, pressed her teeth to his shoulder and cried out in release.

When it was over, Magnus kissed Abigail and he kissed Ortus lazily and Abigail’s fingers traced circles through the hair on Ortus’s chest.

“Well?” Magnus asked.

“I’m resurrected,” Ortus said in a tone that could only be described as reverent. It was the truth. He felt reborn.

“A head start on your next epic,” Magnus said with a satisfied nod.

“Head start?”

“What was he calling it?” Magnus asked his wife over Ortus’s shoulder.

“The Pentiad,” Abigail murmured, her voice thick and quiet. Ortus had never been privy to such post-coital comfort, to the soft careful touches, the easy movement of three bodies pressed together as one, .

“Ortus Nigenad and the Penning of the Pentiad,” Magnus announced, his chest puffed out as he orated. “Twenty pages on this moment at least.”

“Twenty?” Ortus repeated. He was surprised to find that he was smiling. It felt like it’d been a long time since he’d smiled. “I could write at least fifty on the two of you. Entire volumes.”

“Well, we've got the time," Magnus said. "You've conjured a desk and the flimsy. So get to it, man!”

And with that, the Fifth collectively booted him from the bed.

Ortus laughed as he stumbled out of the bed, and when he stood, he found he was standing on sure feet. Abigail tossed him his robe and it hit him square in the chest. The shirt Magnus threw and it landed on his head, momentarily blinding him. Ortus hugged the yards of black fabric to his chest and laughed, his chest shaking with it, his heart full.


End file.
